Surprise! Mayor Michael Bloomberg Expresses Support for NYU Massive Expansion in the Village – Will this Help or Hurt the University?

Why does this feel like term limits all over again? The daily papers all supporting an unsustainable and undesired position completely opposite the wishes of most New Yorkers. The billionaire Mayor on the wrong side. Again. And then, all his city agencies – in this case, the Planning Commission and City Council – will inevitably just fall in line. It’s clear that Bloomberg had already expressed behind the scenes his support of the plan. Mike is always in favor of anything that benefits the developers and corporations. And we know that NYU President John Sexton jumped down to City Hall to support granting no limit of Bloomberg’s term in his up-is-down testimony. As I wrote at the time, “More Bloomberg. More NYU.”

It’s sort of horrifying – if it wasn’t so real.

Hopefully, things can be learned by those issues on which Bloomberg has not “won.” Can someone remind me what those are? I know there have been a few. Westside Stadium, for one. Others? (And when I say “won,” Bloomberg hasn’t really “won” on any of these issues, as much as subverted the democratic process and bought influence somehow – it’s never a “fair” fight.)

2 thoughts on “Surprise! Mayor Michael Bloomberg Expresses Support for NYU Massive Expansion in the Village – Will this Help or Hurt the University?”

Aside from the Westside Stadium, another one he didn’t “win” was the 2012 Olympics. Also, congestion pricing, although he is trying his best to make NYC un-navigable by car by installing ridiculous and ugly “pedestrian plazas”, cramming bike lanes down our throats, and starting this summer, filling the streets with Kamikaze amateur bicyclists without helmets.

Hi Seth, Right. The 2012 Olympics and Congestion Pricing. Thanks! (Unfortunately those might be the ‘only’ big ones although I know they were extremely important to him.) I think those had to do with outside factors which is why they failed. Anything he has ‘sole’ control within NYC media and City Council, he seems to get over. And he also backs these projects behind-the-scenes ensuring his agencies support it (which happened btw in relation to Landmarks Preservation Commission and WSP Phase I).

I’m very much over the “pedestrian plazas” also (well, I never was a fan to begin with either). I don’t know about the summer plan for the “Kamikaze amateur bicyclists without helmets.” ?

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For my Activist Friends

Realize that little things lead to bigger things ... And there's a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don't grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don't grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you've done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of.
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